


wondered if I could come home

by sabrinachill



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-27
Updated: 2019-02-27
Packaged: 2019-11-06 15:50:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17942636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sabrinachill/pseuds/sabrinachill
Summary: Michael has always been searching for a home.





	wondered if I could come home

**Author's Note:**

> I had to pause in the middle of last night’s episode in order to immediately cry this into my phone. I hope you like it.

Michael is seven years old, staring at a sign made of rotting wood and faded, flaking green paint. The words on it read “Residential Home for Children,” but Michael doesn’t know that. He can’t even speak yet, much less read, and has no idea that the lines and curves on the sign are letters. He certainly isn’t aware that those letters have sound, have _meaning_.

To him, they’re nothing more than ugly swirls of paint. 

And maybe that’s for the best. Maybe it’s good that his first association with the word _home_ isn’t going to be this place. 

Because it’s all sterile walls and rows of hard cots filled with traumatized kids, supervised by adults who are exhausted at best, malicious at worst. It’s cold nights huddled under thin blankets that smell strange, quietly crying himself to sleep. It’s itchy clothes that don’t quite fit right, it’s pinches and pokes and shoves and sneering comments he doesn’t fully understand. It’s regimented chaos, systematic cruelty. 

He wants to run back to the desert, to crawl back inside the pod, to drift back into its silent oblivion. But he doesn’t know how, or where to find it, or if it would even take him. 

After all, it rejected him once before. It woke him up, spit him out, made him leave. 

And now this place is all he has. 

* * *

Michael is eleven years old and in his sixth home in as many months. Something happens every time — foster parents change their minds, or split up, or get arrested; Michael loses control and blows something up, or he gets hit somewhere that he can’t hide and a teacher reports the bruise... something. 

Something always happens. 

Everything breaks; everything ends. 

He hasn’t learned much about this world yet — like why it’s so often cold and lonely and hot and crowded all at the same time, or why it’s filled with dangerously sharp edges when people are made of such soft, vulnerable flesh — but he has this lesson seared into his skin, etched into his bones. Everything ends. Everything is temporary. Permanence, safety, _home —_ thoseare nothing more than vicious lies.  

* * *

Michael is fourteen, and the nuns at his current group home are fond of saying that their _true_ home is in heaven. Michael almost likes that idea, an invisible home in the vast expanse of the unknowable sky, waiting to welcome him back one day. 

But the sisters don’t seem to see the beauty in that. Instead, they weaponize their heavenly home, use it as an excuse to make _this_ place, this world, as cruel and judgmental and painful as possible. 

He’s reminded of that every time his shirt sleeve rubs against the crucifix burned into his arm, every time he has the recurring nightmare where demons are chasing him, hunting him. He always runs, gasping and desperate, down long hallways of closed doors, his feet torn open and bleeding as they land on broken glass from shattered lightbulbs. He slips and stumbles until he reaches a mildewed bathroom at the far end, locking himself inside.

Panting, shaking, he splashes water on his face and looks up in the cracked mirror over the sink — only to find the demon’s face looking back at him.

It has been inside of him all along. 

And then he startles awake, screaming, feeling like something frightening and evil is crawling beneath his skin, something he can never cut out, something that is an intrinsic part of him.

But it’s just his gangly body in the narrow bed, with its scratchy sheets and lumpy mattress. Around him, half a dozen other boys are crammed into the tiny, austere room, each of them accustomed to the nightmares by now. They don’t bother acknowledging him, too busy dealing with various nightmares of their own. 

So Michael curls his arms around his ribs and takes deep, shaky breaths until his heart stops hammering, until exhaustion overwhelms him and drags him back to sleep. 

This is not a home. It could never be.

* * *

Michael is sixteen, and home is the truck he bought from the junkyard the second he scraped together enough cash. It only runs half the time and always smells like old french fries and gym socks; the vinyl bench seat is cracked and has a loose spring that hits him in the nuts every time he drives over a pot hole. 

But it’s _his._

It’s the first thing he’s ever owned outright, the first thing that no one will take from him. It’s so crappy that no one would _want_ to.

But the radio still works and it gets him back and forth to school and the two part-time jobs he’s picked up in order to support himself, and the engine is loud enough to help drown the anger that seems to always bubble inside him. 

He’ll learn how to fix the rest.

Besides, it gives him the freedom to drive out into the desert any time he wants, to find an empty spot to park and lie down in the bed, wrapped up in his sleeping bag. He found it at Goodwill; it’s stained with a broken zipper and has duct tape plastered over a hole near the bottom, but it’s soft and warm and he kind of loves it. 

On moonless nights the stars seem to shine brighter, as if the sky has lowered, come close enough that if he stretches out his hands he might catch one. He stares up at them for hours, dreaming that someday he’ll learn which one he came from, which one is _his_ , which distant dot of light is the place where he truly belongs. 

Until then, he’s got his rusty old truck and the wide open spaces, the sand and hills and lizards and cacti. 

A lone coyote howls in the distance; Michael grins and calls back. 

* * *

Michael is eighteen and hiding in a tool shed on a cold night, the desert wind relentless and biting, whipping through the cracks in the walls. He’s been here dozens of times, maybe hundreds, and even if he can’t quite admit it to himself, there’s a reason why he keeps coming back. 

Alex. 

Every time Michael shows up here, he’s waiting, hoping, keeping one eye on the dingy white door and watching for Alex’s spiky hair and silver studs, for his quick smile and soft eyes. 

And, most of the time, his patience is rewarded. 

He’s come to love this old building. Its walls are the first that have felt protective instead of restrictive, and inside them is where he learned that touches can be tender, that laughter can be kind, that hands can heal as easily as hurt. 

But when Alex stumbles in an hour later, bruised and bleeding, Michael forgets those lessons entirely. Jesse had taken the belt to his back again, the lashes cutting fresh stripes over the scars of older ones, staining Alex in varying shades of red and pink and silvery white. 

And still, Alex smiles a little at the sight of him. 

Michael wants to explode, wants to tear the shed down around them, wants to rip Jesse Manes’ still-beating heart from his chest. But they’ve been through all this before, over and over, and Michael knows the truth better than anyone else: They’re just kids. They can rage and scream and cry and fight, and all it will earn them is a harder hit next time. 

So he swallows the anger, compressing it until it’s a rock of coal burning hot in his belly, and pulls the familiar first-aid kit from its spot on the shelf. Alex carefully peels off the blood-stained shirt that’s plastered to his back, quietly hissing with pain, and Michael steers him to sit on the small bed, resting a palm gently on his shoulder.

It’s just comfort, a gentle touch to try to erase some of the brutal ones, but Alex looks at him and Michael is looking back and suddenly it’s a _moment._

Their faces are so close, breath brushing across skin, Alex’s eyes darting to Michael’s lips, just once, just for a second, but it’s enough to betray that there’s something there. A charge waiting to spark, a fuse ready to light. 

And Michael can’t handle it yet, doesn’t want to risk hurting this boy whose literal blood is on his hands. Because he can’t lose this thing, this one precious thing, that means more to him than anything he’s found in this world so far. 

So the moment passes in a clean cotton swab dabbed over Alex’s broken-open back, the smell of rubbing alcohol burning in the air and a thin ribbon of crimson blood rolling across Alex’s skin. Alex murmurs a thank you and looks away; in answer, Michael’s hands are tender and kind. 

The fire between them banks down to burning embers, waiting to blaze to life on some unknown later day. 

But still, Michael knows that the moment happened. That their connection is _real_. 

And it’s the first time he wonders if perhaps home isn’t really a place at all. 

* * *

Michael is twenty-three and sipping coffee laced with whiskey and acetone, practicing his now-familiar ritual of scouring the morning’s issue of the Roswell Daily Record and checking for listings of any recent combat deaths. 

Sunrise is just breaking in the distance, thin, pale light leaking in between the chintzy curtains hanging over the Airstream’s windows. 

He scans, eyes darting over the headlines and pictures and crossword puzzles, not really reading anything. He’s searching for the shape of Alex’s name, fearing it more than anything, dreading the day when he finds out that his world has already ended, thousands of miles away from him on this dirty rock of a planet that he’s come to despise. 

Last year a soldier from nearby Alamogordo was killed in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan; Michael had read the article with crushing, spiraling tightness in his chest and a deafening buzzing sound in his ears. There was no mention of Alex — the soldier wasn’t even in the same branch of the military — but that didn’t do much to reassure his racing heart. The fear had rendered him useless at work all that day, his hands shaking so hard that he couldn’t even hold a wrench. 

There’s a memorial intersection named after that fallen soldier now, nothing more than a small white sign stuck in the dirt, already mostly ignored and forgotten. 

Michael drove out to see it once, without really knowing why. He had planned to just pass by, to glance at it and keep going — but as soon as his headlights caught that piece of metal, and the stranger’s name printed on it in bold, permanent black, he’d had to pull over. He’d cut the engine and fumbled with his seatbelt and struggled to open the door, tears welling in his eyes as he’d tumbled out of the truck. 

And then he’d fallen to his knees right there at the edge of the asphalt, whispering a fervent prayer to a god he had never believed in that he would never have to see one of these signs emblazoned with Alex’s name.

In the time since, he has decided he doesn’t want to see Alex’s name _ever_ again. Period. All of that is in the past; dredging any of it up would never mean anything good.

He loves Alex. He’ll never get to have him again. 

And Michael holds that knowledge in his mangled hand every day.

Everything breaks; everything ends. 

But today is a good day. There’s not a single mention of Alex Manes, of any Airman, anywhere to be found. 

This is the kindest life treats him now: granting him one more day where he can almost breathe easy, where his world spins on without shattering apart, where he can raise his chin and plaster on a grin and carry on as best he can. 

The sun rises higher, burning brighter as it clears the horizon. So Michael tugs on his jeans and steps out of the Airstream, making his way through the junkyard. It’s just a stretch of barren land piled with ugly pieces of broken things, and Michael smiles a little, bitterly. 

He fits right in.

And he wonders, not for the first time, if that means that _this_ is what it means to be home.

* * *

Michael is twenty-eight and rolling around in his tiny bed with what’s left of Alex Manes. They are both shadows, ghosts, blurry facsimiles of the people they once were. Michael lost himself completely in a single night ten years ago; Alex has fallen apart in tiny fragments every day since. 

Littered amongst their shared casualties are broken spirits, dashed hopes, failed optimism, and lost belief. But even now, even as the battered shells of the boys they once were, they _fit._ All their jagged edges line up like complicated puzzle pieces, like shattered pottery that can be rebuilt, mended, glued back together. 

And, in moments like this, Michael feels a warmth in his chest that he’d almost forgotten, a spark burning against the dark, a sense of safety and security that’s so foreign it’s almost uncomfortable. It’s like he’s flipping through an old yearbook, looking at photos of himself from before Rosa, before the camping trip even, before fear and guilt and anger and distance took up permanent residence behind his sternum. 

Being with Alex feels like he could be _whole_ again. 

Alex scratches his nails through Michael’s chest hair and swirls his tongue around his nipple and Michael wants him to keep going, he wants to bury himself inside Alex, he wants to tangle their arms and legs around each other until he can’t tell where he ends and Alex starts. He wants skin and sweat and heat and friction and tenderness and safety and _love._

And, for the first time, he nearly believes that he can have it. He can see it, almost _feel_ it, glistening and glowing and calling to him from just beyond his reach.

Somehow he knows that he’s strong enough to get there this time. That he’s going to be brave, and honest; that he’s going to build himself a home. 

He’s going to build one for them _both._  

* * *

Michael is thirty and unpacking the last of the moving boxes in the old Valenti hunting cabin. Alex is in the kitchen, wearing an apron and singing along to some old Panic! at the Disco song as he chops vegetables, tossing them into a soup pot. A cheery fire is crackling in the hearth and the light is warm and golden, diffusing through the space, filling up all the cracks and crevices and shadowy corners. 

Michael lifts the books from the bottom of the box using his hands, not his mind. Alex knows the truth of him now so he doesn’t have to hide his powers, but Michael wants this to be tangible. He wants to feel the solid weight of the books, the smooth paper covers under his fingertips, the dog-eared pages and warped texture of dried acetone stains. He wants to appreciate this, to recognize and remember every little detail of moving in here. 

So he carefully, deliberately, places each one on the shelf. _Their_ shelf. The one he and Alex had built and hung two weeks ago, when there was sawdust in Alex’s hair and an errant stripe of white paint on the side of Michael’s neck and they’d bickered over exactly where to hang it and whether it was level and Michael was holding a hammer for the first time in over a decade without thinking of Jesse Manes and it all just _clicked._

That this was it. This was them, in all their disastrously domestic glory, doing the daily work of knitting their lives together, fusing themselves into some semblance of a family.

And Michael knew, all the way to the absolute depths of himself, that he finally had something real. That this was something solid, a foundation, something that _mattered._  

The memory alone makes him smile so broadly that his cheeks ache, so he quickly finishes with the books and makes his way into the kitchen. Alex is stirring the pot, his shoulders solid and real and _right there_ , warm and welcoming any time Michael wants to touch him. It’s a dream, it’s a gift, it’s better than Michael ever imagined it could be. 

He’s going to propose tomorrow, the ring resting hot and heavy in his pocket. It’s screaming at him to make this official, to hold it tight and never let go. 

But for tonight he just wants to enjoy this — the  routine, tranquil bliss of everyday life with the man he loves. 

So he casually pops a sliced carrot into his mouth and slides his arms around Alex’s waist, pulling him away from the stove for an impromptu dance. Alex grins, looping his arms around Michael’s neck and pulling him close; Michael presses his nose into the soft, warm bend of Alex’s neck.

He breathes in soap and skin; he exhales the last of his pain and uncertainty. 

He’s somewhere safe and sheltering and  _good_. Somewhere he’s never been before, but is somehow more familiar than his own name. 

Home. Michael is finally, finally _home_. 

**Author's Note:**

> Title from “First Day of My Life” by Bright Eyes. 
> 
> I'm on Tumblr, same username.


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